Infrastructure Architecture Lab

The Infrastructure Architecture Lab conducts research on the relationships between broad, macroeconomic factors driving built infrastructure and the specificities of architectural and urban form. Lab researchers combine the knowledge frameworks and techniques of economic and planning theory with the practices of architectural design to study the real-world complexities that go into the making of infrastructure and its effects on built form. MIT-IAL particularly focuses on situations in emerging economies and the developing world. Work currently being carried out at MIT-IAL focuses on two key areas: 

1. the dynamics of land conversion as a supply-side feature in global investment trends; and
2. the manner in which governments and policy paradigms on infrastructure respond to mobility as a tacit political demand of economic citizenship in the world today.

Combining resources of professional and academic expertise, the lab is particularly interested in utilizing its studies of land use patterns and mobility to devise strategies that bring about real change in scenarios around the world.

Director: Prof. Arindam Dutta

Advisory Board:  
Andrew M. Scott, Chair, Department of Architecture; Hashim Sarkis, Dean, School of Architecture and Planning

Finance and Administration: 
Andreea O'Connell